


Material Memory

by Lissamel



Series: Inky Souls & The Depths Below (or, Lissa's Ink Machine Canon) [5]
Category: Bendy and the Ink Machine
Genre: Fluff, Gen, How Do I Tag, Presents, i guess?, mentions of PTSD symptoms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-23
Updated: 2017-11-23
Packaged: 2019-02-05 22:11:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12803469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lissamel/pseuds/Lissamel
Summary: Being nice won't kill you. Most of the time, anyway.





	Material Memory

Henry Wright found a book under his old desk chair.

He wasn’t _looking_ for a book there. In fact, he wasn’t looking for _anything_ there. He was looking for other objects, objects he considered largely arbitrary yet still...Meaningful, in a way his head couldn’t make sense of but his heart could. He’d already found a few of them: a squeaky little plush doll, a wrench, a vinyl record. He had these objects awkwardly balanced in his grip, and he slid his reading glasses from his forehead to his nose by shaking his head as he got out a small notebook and wrote down the objects to keep track of them. Checklists made things easier, he’d found. He’d only came into his old office out of some sense of nostalgia, some abstract hope that he’d feel the way he felt thirty years or so ago, in the good old days, when Joey Drew was his best friend and this children’s show was his true passion.

Instead, all he really felt was a sense of how much time he’d wasted here.

Still, regardless, it wasn’t a _complete_ waste of time; since Henry Wright found a book under his old desk chair. Curious, the man set the wrench, the record, and the doll on his old desk before slowly kneeling down and getting the book. He sat down on his chair and began to page through, keeping his notebook and pencil on his lap, just in case. He found it to be a telephone book, with the old employees and their addresses and telephone numbers listed in the rather sloppy but still identifiable hand of Joey Drew. Henry skimmed through, eyes only dwelling on names that brought back potent memories. _Campbell, Susan Clarabell_ \--With her bright eyes and eternally sunny demeanor, who couldn’t like her? Her name had an ‘x’ written next to it. _Cohen, Grant Dale--_ Henry half-laughed, remembering the long conversations he’d have with Grant over Joey’s irresponsibility with money, and by extension all the times he had to calm him down and remind Grant Joey knew what he was doing. His name had a question mark nearby. _Connor, Thomas Ludwig_ \--He was allergic to cats, though not _fatally_ allergic, thank heavens. His name also had a question mark. _Finn, Shawn Duffy_ \--Henry always found it _far_ too ambitious that Joey was beginning merchandising deals when the cartoons weren’t even particularly popular, but everyone knew you couldn’t really stop Joey Drew. A third question mark. _Franks, Wallace Oswald_ \--Who moved like a cartoon and bit at his thumb if he was thinking too hard over something. An ‘x’.

The symbols were beginning to make Henry curious, since he could see not _every_ employee had them next to their name. He began to page through a bit faster.

 _Lawrence, Samuel Horace_ \--He had too much nose and never could decide a favorite musician. ‘X’.

 _Pendle, Alison Ortensia_ \--He couldn’t recall that name. Perhaps she’d only came in after he’d left. Question mark.

 _Polk, Norman Gladstone_ \--Always seemed to know more than you told him. Maybe that’s why everyone rumored he had ties to gangs, the mafia. ‘X’.

Then, at the very end, he found his own name. _Wright, Henry Fauntleroy._ It had no symbols near it, but it had been quickly scratched out with a pen, leaving splatterings of inkblots around the hasty attempt to erase him. He stared at this for a long, long while. Had Joey tried to erase him? That didn’t seem like the Joey he knew, the Joey with stars in his eyes and dreams up in his head. Still...Henry supposed even somebody like _Joey_ couldn’t be _eternally_ happy. What had happened to him? To the others…?

Henry pushed those questions aside as he grabbed his notebook and pencil, stood up, and tucked the phone book into the pocket of his pants. Maybe, after he saw what Joey wanted him to see, he’d give the others a call. Until then, he had other objects to find and place on pedestals...For reasons he couldn’t even _begin_ to comprehend.

 

~

 

The music department held a lot of surprises. Inky abominations that wanted to kill him were one thing. Flooded floors where the ink came up above his knees and reminded him too much of his time in the navy for him to be _totally_ comfortable was another. Strange amounts of Bendy cutouts and what seemed to him to be strange ritual paraphernalia made up a third thing. There were other surprises too, smaller, and far less frightening.

Searching for Wally’s missing keys in the trash cans, Henry instead found a pack of cigars, open, half-empty. Wally’s favorite brand, and he only knew this because he _only_ smoked one brand. The smell on it’s own was enough to tip him off. Clumsy janitor must have left them here. He held onto them, writing a note to himself to return them to Wally, if he saw him again.

Later, when Henry came up to the projector in order to study a list of musical instruments he’d written down along with the footnote caveat of having to turn the projector on first, he found something else. There was a deck of cards, fading and well-used, but rather fancy and _extremely_ artistically appealing. Art deco, was it? Maybe he could show Linda these--His sister would be utterly _thrilled_ with them. He thought the better of that when he saw the joker cards had the big, loopy signature of their owner: Norman Polk. Momentarily, Henry felt like a fool for not guessing that. Everyone--Well, everyone who wasn’t Joey that is--Knew about Norman’s little gambling fix. More trinkets to return. He held on to them as well, holding them with the cigars before flicking the projector on and inputting a strange musical key.

The code led him to a sanctuary--How long had _that_ been here?--And from there, into the office of Sammy Lawrence. Henry couldn’t help but do a little snooping through the old papers scattered about. They were musical compositions mainly; some for background pieces, some for lyrical melodies. Some had snarky notes in the margins ( _Beat the drums as loudly as you can--I don’t_ **_care_ ** _what_ **_Joey_ ** _says we’re_ **_not_ ** _constructing a_ **_pyrophone_ ** _even if the cartoon_ **_is_ ** _called Hellfire Follies_ ), others were half-consumed by inky stains. Some even seemed to be recent, a bizarre mixture of church songs and tunes Joey scrapped but Sammy was still fond of. Then there was something else among the papers, something that seemed intentionally to be hidden, and Henry pulled it out from between two compositions. It was an old photograph showing two men: one an awkward bird of a man holding a bassoon, the other a shorter yet still jolly-looking man with one arm around the other’s shoulders in a hug. The one holding the bassoon was _very_ smudged with ink, practically blotted out entirely. With a frown, Henry attempted to scratch the ink off. He knew these people: Sammy with the bassoon, and his brother Johnny with his arm around him. He never knew Sammy kept this here. Wally and Norman, he could understand them forgetting things in the studio--But _Sammy_? Sammy was meticulous, he would never...Henry tucked the picture in the inside cover of his notebook. He put his notebook and pencil in his shirt pocket, then stuffed the cigars and the deck of cards into the pockets of his pants, exhaling. More things to return, if he ever saw these people again. It was just the nice thing to do.

As it turned out, Henry would be seeing Sammy _far_ sooner than anticipated. Of course, it wasn’t the Sammy from his memory; instead being a man dripping with ink who worshipped Bendy so much he was willing to kill Henry to be in it’s grace. His plan fell through, luckily...Though _un_ luckily it fell through because of the interference of a monster made of ink who wanted him instead. Henry ran and ran and ran away from the beast, turning corners and trying to ignore the almost rain of ink coming down from the ceiling, until he stumbled into a room clean from the demon’s inky corruption and the beast stopped chasing him. He caught his breath. He slid his reading glasses down again, then took out his notebook and pencil to write down a new objective: _Run away_. He then checked it off, for completion’s sake. As he smiled a self-satisfied sort of smile, he closed his notebook, and his eyes caught on the corner of the old photograph he’d stuck in the cover. Must have been shaken loose by his running. He pulled the picture out, stared at it for a moment, then looked back over his shoulder.

_Henry, don’t you even…_

He walked outside of that safe room. There was no more inky blotches, no more drips from the ceiling. He took in a breath. He tried his best to walk lightly, trying not to make too much noise against the old floorboards as he retraced his steps. The walk back to that strange little room where Sammy tried to sacrifice him wasn’t particularly _long_ ; though the thought of the demon pouncing out from the shadows made him walk unnecessarily slowly. With no interruptions, Henry came back into the ritual room, then up to the door of the old recording booth Sammy had slid into. The door was still closed, and he didn’t dare open it, for fear of what could be inside. He tore out a page in his little notebook, scribbled a note onto it, then went down on his haunches, sliding note and photograph alike under the crack in the door. He rose, turned around, and slightly faster this time walked away.

_Hopefully, he’s not dead…_

 

~

 

Stitching yourself back together from just a puddle was an agonizing experience, but not a feeling unfamiliar to Sammy.

He formed a hand first, then loose ink inched it’s way up his wrist to make an arm, pulling itself into a torso. His head began to reform, and once it was whole again his half-remade other hand clutched at it. He swallowed back the urge to scream in pain--His lord wouldn’t like that. What had he _done_? What had he done so wrong in his offering that his savior found him fit to be punished so severely? He didn’t know. Blindly, his free hand padded at the floor, trying to find his mask.

His fingers instead found a thinner sheet of paper, sticking to the looser ink on his fingertips.

A small grumble came from the half-reformed man, and he pulled his hand away from his head and rose the other hand up to his face. It was a sheet of notebook paper with a message scrawled in pencil: _I’ll get you out of here. Promise. Still like chocolate cake?_ Below, a signature: _Henry Wright._ Both the note and the name made his head feel a bit hazy, but then again, he _was_ currently trying to reconstruct a torso and fill the legs of his overalls with enough ink to stand on. He shook the note off of his hand. Mask, mask, where was his…

His hand found something else.

It wasn’t his mask. It felt glossy. Now slightly peeved, Sammy pulled his hand up back to his face--And paused. Now stuck to his fingers was a black-and-white photograph, one showing two men, two men unfamiliar to him yet still stirred in some part of his memory. For a moment, panic shot through him. He’d _meant_ to sacrifice this trifle to his lord--Or, at least, so he kept insisting to himself--But every single time he got around to doing it, he always cowardly stopped. He could never bring himself to follow through, for some reason. Had it been left by his lord--A task, perhaps a warning?

Maybe.

He peeled the photo off of his hand. Then he looked the other way, finding his mask and pulling it back over his face. As his legs continued to fill themselves in and ink shifted to ensure every part of Sammy was just as he recalled it being before his punishment, he turned his head to study both the picture and the note together. The men, so close to familiar; the name, seeming to join with a face he’d seen just as one would join two notes for a song…

He stared at the two things, and let the haziness in his head mix with a sort of confusion and a sort of hope he couldn’t place the source of.

“Yes,” He said, even though he couldn't quite understand who he was supposed to be speaking to. “...Yes. I think I do still like chocolate cake.”

 

~

 

“Can you speak?”

Henry opened up a trunk in the strange safehouse he’d been brought to, then turned his head to face the person who’d brought him there: Boris the wolf. The living cartoon gave a shrug and shook his head, then stuck two fingers into his mouth and tried to whistle. Three inky music notes jumped out of the top of his head and rocked back and forth to make an indication that noise should be there, but no sound came. The notes vanished, and Boris took his fingers out of his mouth.

“Huh,” Henry said, turning back to the trunk and beginning to rifle through. “I...Would have thought Joey would have found you the perfect voice by now.” There was a pause before Henry remarked, “Maybe Grant,” And then laughed to himself. He found what he was looking for--A can of Briar Label Bacon Soup--And snatched it up, taking notice of something below. Sticking the can under his arm, he grabbed the object: a book, _The Wonderful Wizard of Oz._ A small, sort of nostalgic smile came onto his face. He began to page through, spotting the signature from the author on the opening page and the signature of the book’s owner, Susan Campbell, just below. Some pages were blotted with ink, while others were missing entirely--Mostly the full-page color pictures. “Did you use to have a voice?” He asked, shutting the book and turning back around.

Boris nodded.

“What happened?”

Boris shifted on his feet, then pointed up to the clock happily ticking away on the wall.

“Bendy?” Henry guessed, and he gave a bit of a hum when Boris nodded again. “Took it, huh?” Another nod. Somehow, Henry was barely shocked. Too many things had happened today for that. “That’s a shame. I’m...Sure you would have been good at conversation,” He offered a half-laugh to lighten the mood, and Boris seemed to return it, albeit silently. Henry turned back, shutting the trunk and taking a moment to shake the soup can and gauge how much was left in it (“You’ll probably want more than this…”) before pausing for a moment or two. He exhaled. “Did you...Used to be somebody?” This was met with silence (of course) and Henry turned back around to face Boris. The wolf’s head was tilted, some question marks floating off of it. “I-I mean, Sammy...I _saw_ him, he wasn’t always like that, he used to be...Well, a sourpuss, but _well-meaning._ So...What about you? Were you...Someone...Before?”

The wolf’s face was _terribly_ confused. He scratched at his head, eyes rolling away. Then he bit at his thumb, rocking back on his feet--The gesture made Henry chuckle and Boris stopped, hopping back up straight, hands on his hips. “No, no,” Henry smiled, gesturing with his head a bit as though to dismiss his own laughter, “You just...Reminded me of somebody,” He explained, even though that didn’t seem to do much to clarify the situation to Boris. He shifted the objects in his grasp to free up a hand, then walked up to the wolf, feeling around in his back pocket. “Here.” Henry pulled something out--A pack of cigars. He held it out. “Just...Hold onto this for me, okay? I’ll see if I can find you some more soup, and we’ll have a snack.”

Boris took the pack. Henry nodded and walked away. Boris watched him go, then looked to the pack of cigars, unable to understand why the man had wanted him to take these. He tossed the pack between his hands. He took out a cigar and squinted at it. He stuck the end of it in his mouth. It didn’t taste like much of anything to the living cartoon, but he couldn’t deny he sort of liked the sensation of it being there. Weird. He’d have to thank Henry--Was that his name? Boris suddenly realized the man had never properly introduced himself to him. Well, whatever, it wasn’t as though he could even say the name he'd thought of. He’d have to thank Henry for these when he came back. He liked them, despite not really understanding their purpose. The wolf sat back down at his table, chewing on the end of the cigar and amusing himself by taking the others out of the pack and making shapes with them. It didn’t take too much longer for Henry to return with three cans of soup and the storybook all precariously balanced in his grasp; and upon seeing Boris playing around he cracked a smile. “You like them?” He asked, and Boris brightly nodded in reply. “Good to hear!” Henry sounded cheerier than before as he dumped the contents of the soup cans into a pot and heated it up. Once heated, the snack was given to Boris in exchange for the door lever, and with that now in his possession, Henry began to make his leave.

He was stopped by something tapping his shoulder.

With a ‘hm?’, Henry turned his head, seeing Boris’s eager smiling face, still comically with the cigar between his teeth. “You want to come with?” He asked, and Boris nodded in reply. Henry smirked. “Alright. Keep close. We don’t know what’s out there,” He beckoned, and the twosome began to make their way out of the safehouse and down the hall. Henry paused. Hesitantly, he said a different name, studying the wolf to see how he’d react. “Wally?”

The wolf tilted his head.

“...Never mind,” Henry said, putting _The Wonderful Wizard of Oz_ into Boris’s hands for safekeeping and turning back around to press onward.

_...Whassat? Did ‘e jus’ say--Me! That’s me! Aw, Henry, I never doubted ‘ya, not once, not for a second!_

Funny, Boris thought. His internal monologue never had _that_ accent.

 

~

 

Henry had learned not to have any sort of expectations in this studio, because sooner or later, they would be subverted. Still, even with this sort of philosophy, Henry couldn’t say he anticipated being employed as ‘errand boy’ to a deformed cartoon character.

Henry stumbled into the elevator, holding the strange syringe-like contraption at his side. He shook some ink off of his other hand. He put his reading glasses back on and took out his small notebook and pencil, writing some things down and checking some things off. He jabbed at the button to go to floor nine (if it was _actually_ floor nine below, Henry had all but given up figuring out how deep underground he was) with the eraser of his pencil, and when the elevator didn’t immediately respond, he stabbed it a few more times. Maybe he should have listened to Thomas and just taken the stairs. Just as he was about to do just that, however, the gate on the elevator closed, and it began to move. Alice was talking again, describing a time where she was famous and her dream of wanting it back again.

“Dreams come true, Susie,” She said over the intercom, more to herself than to Henry. “Dreams come true.”

The man shifted, pushing his reading glasses back onto his forehead, pocketing the little notebook and the pencil, and looking over to Boris. His companion had taken to sitting down in the elevator, gnawing on the cigar as though it were a licorice stick, reading the storybook Henry had given him to hold. “Like the book?” He asked, and Boris nodded without looking up. Henry nodded back, gaze drifting to the upper corners of the elevator as it gave a bit of a rattle. “Dreams come true, Susie…” He parroted to himself in a mutter. “Do you think she’s there?” When he looked back to Boris, he saw the confusion etched on the wolf’s face, but he still carried on. “Because Sammy’s-- _Sammy_ , and you’re _Wally,_ maybe,” The question marks floated around the wolf’s head, but he ignored them, “She...She _could_ be Susie. It would make the most _sense._ But still…” He let out a sigh, shaking his head. “I don’t know.”

The elevator shook as it stopped, and the gates opened. For a second, Henry just stared into the open space before him. Then he turned back to Boris. He extended a hand. “Can I have the book for a second?” He asked, and reluctantly Boris handed it over. Henry awkwardly stuck the syringe under his arm as he walked, getting his notebook and tearing out another page, scribbling down a note, and then stuffing it into the inside cover of the storybook. Hopefully it’d be enough. He walked up to Alice’s big door (he didn’t know if the eyes of the giant cartoonish angel watching over him were supposed to make him feel comforted or even more unnerved) and dropped both the syringe and the book into her little drop-off chute. She sent him off on another errand to run. The request was met with Henry rubbing his face in agitation, but he still took up the familiar axe and went on his way.

“Now...What’s this?”

From within her chamber, Alice Angel picked up the syringe filled with thick (rotting, congealed, _dirty, imperfect_ ) ink. Disgusting. Yet, perhaps, functional. Sometimes, you had to sacrifice style for substance, no matter how painful it was. She set it aside. Her one good eye then fell on the _second_ thing that had fallen into her domain. She hadn’t _asked_ for anything else. Was it a present? How _sweet._

Flattery got you nowhere.

Still, she reached out, picking up the book by it’s binding and then observing it. _The Wonderful Wizard of Oz._ She liked that title. She opened up the book then quickly skimmed through it, taking note of inky blotches and torn pages and even what appeared to be burn marks here or there. She paused near the end of the story and stared at an illustration; an illustration that showed a young woman with a crown of jewels and hair in ringlets and a dress with hearts on it across from a plainer-looking child with hair in simple pigtails, all colored in a light red. One finger slowly stroked down the form of the young woman. Her good eye went down to the text on the page. “ _..._ ‘Where the Witch Glinda sat’ _…_ ” She hadn’t seemed to noticed she’d begun to read aloud, as though it were habit. “‘She was both beautiful and young to their eyes. Her hair was a rich red in color and fell in flowing ringlets over her shoulders. Her dress was pure white; but her eyes were blue, and they looked kindly upon the little girl’ _…”_ Alice paused, a small smile coming onto her face. “ _I_ should be so beautiful,” But, as was often the case with Alice, her wistfulness soon became fury. “ _I_ should be so beautiful! _I_ should have these colors! _My_ hair should be red! Why was I never colored!? Was I not _good enough_ for him? I _want_ these colors--To be perfect--I _need_ these colors--” Once again she flipped through the pages of the book, looking at the colors as they passed her by (brown and green and yellow and red again), growling in disdain whenever an inkblot blocked an illustration--

She stopped.

She was at the inside of the front cover, which bore an image of a lion between two trees. A note was wedged in the binding. She pulled out the little sheet of paper. It was a message: _Hope you’re still in there. Won’t leave without you. Still your favorite book?_ Then there was a signature: _Henry Wright._ Oh, how nice of her date to leave a thoughtful message! She always knew Henry was a thoughtful man. Good men were _so_ hard to come by...A pity, what she’d have to do to him.

“Thank you,” She said to nobody, in a voice that was soft and regretful and scared and earnest all at once, a voice that was hers but wasn’t hers. “Thank you for remembering me.” Then Alice stopped, swallowed back the tone of voice, and closed the book. “I’ll be perfect _soon_ ,” She said as though reminding herself, and she set the storybook aside so she may return to her work.

 

~

 

The loud pounding of his heartbeat flooded his ears and the dripping of the ink from the ceiling and the walls flooded his vision, but Henry knew he wouldn’t be seen inside the confines of the cramped Little Miracle Station.

Henry had one hand over his mouth and one trembling hand holding the axe as he stared out the slot in the door. The sight of the demon always sent his pulse racing, equally as bad as those shellshocked dreams he’d have. The demon itself seemed to be prowling, seemed to be _searching_ for him, driven only by some insatiable anger Henry couldn’t even fathom.

_Thank you for getting me into trouble, Alice!_

The ink demon turned it’s head away from Henry’s hiding spot, and Henry took the opportunity to lean a little closer to the slot in the door, to look a little harder. He’d never been able to get a decent look at the demon, and even though he was terrified beyond measure, he was also...Curious. How couldn’t he be? Boris looked on-model and Alice looked rather close all things considered, but _this_...His mind wandered back to Sammy, consumed by the same dripping inky corruption, and as the demon began to creep away from Henry a thought came into the man’s head. “Joey?” He whispered, muffled by his hand, concern and confusion and denial all at once coming into his tone.

The demon turned it’s head.

Henry blanched and pulled slightly back, away from the slot in the door. Something was rolling down his back, either sweat or ink, but Henry didn’t dare take the time to check which. The demon crept towards the door, smile seeming to grow just the slightest bit, and from a distance it tilted it’s head and stared at the slot in the door. Henry held his breath. It leaned the smallest bit closer, as though to investigate--Then suddenly looked away, distracted by a sound that seemed to come from floors above. It paused for a moment that felt like years. It began to creep away from the Little Miracle Station, and even when it was long out of eyesight, Henry waited until the ink stopped oozing from every crack in the wood and his deafening heartbeat quieted. He slowly pushed the door back open. He took a careful look around outside. Reassured that the way was clear, he left his little hiding place.

 _Could_ that demon--That strange, twisted figure of ink, bent only to chase and slay him--Actually be Joey? Henry couldn’t say for sure. He wished he had something to tip him off, a voice, some familiar gesture...But nothing. All the demon had was that _smile_ , the smile Joey always carried but also the smile he couldn’t imagine the original cartoon demon without. Henry used his free hand to feel around his pockets, eventually finding and pulling out the phone book he’d pocketed. He exhaled. Then he took out his notebook and pencil and scribbled another note: _Is that you, Joey? I’m willing to make it all water under the bridge._ Which was sort of a lie, but it was just a white lie, what did it matter? He signed his name. He tore out the page. Then he put the phone book and the note on the floor, just leaving it there. Maybe the demon would pick it up eventually. He put the notebook and pencil back.

Henry turned around.

He froze.

Leaning against the wall was a new cut-out of Bendy where no cut-out had been before. It had more realistic eyes that stared right at Henry’s face, inky stains dripping from the forehead and the grinning smile, and a sign in it’s hands: _WANDERING IS A TERRIBLE SIN_.

Seems the demon didn’t like him going out of his way to collect and return mementos.

Henry stared at this new cut-out for a long, long moment. Then he hefted up the axe in his hands and bashed it against the cut-out until it was in fragments all over the floor. He stared at the wreckage, then straightened up, taking out the notebook and pencil again to check _destroy cut-outs_ off of his list. He put the notebook and pencil back once again. He propped the axe on his shoulder. He took a calming breath, then began to walk back to the elevator so he may report back to Alice.

He could have sworn, for a second, he heard the demon laugh at him.

 

~

 

“Shh...There he is. The Projectionist. Skulking in the darkness. You be sure to stay out of his light, if you don’t want trouble. Just bring me back the pieces I need.”

Alice’s words did nothing to calm Henry down when he saw yet another deep mass of ink he’d have to wade through. His heartbeat quickened and he almost lost his grip on the gent pipe in his hands. He took a long moment to try to steady his breathing, to imagine his wife Olive telling him to calm down and that he was safe, to try and feel his sons Franklin and Oliver holding his hands. Inhale. Exhale. He was safe now, he was going to make it out, his family missed him, it would all be alright. The panic staved off (and Henry suddenly very thankful that the Tommy gun Alice had offered up turned out to be fake), Henry proceeded into the abyss on a quest for inky hearts.

The Projectionist…

That name and the hollow sort of light illuminating the inky waste already gave Henry some suspicions, and his heart sank as he pressed the button to play another recording and he heard Norman’s voice. Oh, _Norman..._ His free hand rubbed up and down his face. He always _knew_ Norman would get in trouble someday for all his bad habits...He just wasn’t sure _which_ habit, or _when._ Well...At least that took care of the final memento. Henry took out the deck of cards and put it on top of the tape recorder, then wrote one final note to put on top of it: _Hang in there. And stop trying your luck. Dot would have wanted that._ He signed it, then carefully placed it on top of the cards. Moving excruciatingly slowly as to not disturb the pile he’d made, Henry ventured out into the depths in search of organs.

This ended up easier said than done, as his footsteps made distinct sloshing noises and his confusion with the twisting hallways led him to running into the bizarre and terrifying Projectionist at least three times. But Henry gathered up all the hearts that Alice sent him to collect, and the man made no haste in getting out of that inky hell and trudging back into the elevator. He stabbed at the button to go up, and as the elevator closed it’s doors and complied to his wishes, he turned around and attempted to comfort the wolf who was covering his eyes and trembling from fright.

For a long moment, the Projectionist didn’t seem to realize it's prey was gone. It continued going in it’s patterns, light sweeping over the inky abyss, looking for the man it’d seen in it’s domain. It passed by the other projectors playing their looping scenes to an audience of nobody, and it passed the tape recorder with a small pile of paper, and it stared out into the room beyond it’s little place it knew to be it’s home, and…

...Wait.

The Projectionist turned back around, light falling on the tape recorder and the papers atop it. It slowly approached in curiousity. It picked up the note first, making soft scratchy static noises as it read it over, and then it reached for the deck of cards. It went through the deck, looking at every single card in turn, as though the art on the cards fascinated it. Then it got to the two joker cards--The cards with the big, loopy signatures of a man named...Named...The Projectionist’s hands trembled, the ink on them making smears and stains across the cards and the names. He stood still for a long moment. Then he began to move, creeping to the back of his little area, near an abandoned pile of wooden crates. One crate, laying sideways atop a taller one and therefor for the most part ink-free, had a split in the wood. The split showed that it was filled with film reels all labeled. It looked through the reels. _Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, The Sappiest Place on Earth, Siren Serenade, A Diner Disaster_ ...The Projectionist’s fingers paused, and they pulled up one particular film reel. _Barbershop Blues._ It set the cards on top of the crate. Then, working carefully so it wouldn’t blot the film with ink more than it had to, it threaded the film through it’s own head. It made small murmurs of static as it worked, and when it felt it was at the right spot, it ran it’s fingers against the side of it’s projector head and flipped a switch.

On the wall, a scene played. Bendy, Charley, Barley, and Edgar; all with little boater hats and big smiles on their faces. Bendy twirled a cane around, then tapped it on the ground three times. All four characters inhaled. From the speaker on the Projectionist’s chest, the four sang out: “ _Thaaa-aaaaa-aaa-nk yoooo-oooo-ooou…_ ”

The Projectionist turned the cartoon off.

 

~

 

The elevator had crashed to the floor. Boris had woken him up. And, for his loyalty, Boris was dragged into the darkness by Alice.

Henry pushed himself up. He checked himself over to make sure he was okay. He found one lens of his reading glasses had cracked, and he let out a long sigh. He stared out into the darkness beyond.

He found himself wishing--Not for the first time, and maybe not for the last--That the war had taken more out of him. That he was _more_ drained. That he felt hollow inside, like he’d heard old friends describe themselves as. That he didn’t _care_ so much, that he didn’t _want_ to help everyone.

Then he thought about his family. He thought about Joey, his old best friend. He thought about the old days in the studio; which, while not as rose-colored as he might have liked, still had their good elements. He thought about Boris, the only person to show him decency in this place--Wally--Sammy, Susie, Norman…

He put his glasses on. He opened up his notebook. He scribbled out the last thing on his list: _ascend._ He put the notebook and pencil back, then slid his glasses up to his forehead.

Drawing in a reassuring breath, he pressed on.

**Author's Note:**

> Heh, well, this took a while.
> 
> So, chapter three, huh? What a ride! I, for one, was thrilled by it. And hey, it didn't actively contradict any headcanons I had set up, so that's a bonus! So have a new fic! This one's definitely fluffier than my standard fare, but I like to think Henry is a good man.
> 
> Hope you enjoyed!


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